Lucretia Shields: My husband was able to do everything…he was able to carry on a conversation with me…the next morning, woke up, and he can’t talk to me. He can’t move, he can’t do anything for himself. You really feel like you’re life has literally went to black in a second.
My name is Lucretia Shields. My husband had a stroke. It took away his voice, it took away his ability to walk, to stand, to pretty much do everything. It puts a lot on the other spouse because I now have to take care of everything that we used to share in.
Therapist: He has a family to get back to, so when he started inpatient rehab here at Miami Valley, he was very much motivated to get back to walking, get back to talking.
Lucretia Shields: We drive from Greenville all the way down to Dayton to Miami Valley Hospital which is about an hour’s drive so he can use the Eksosuit.
Therapist: We’ve used the Eksosuit with so many different patients. Even if we do other gait training with our patients, they might not get as many steps in, they might not get the quality of gait, they might only be walking 10 feet early on, whereas with an Ekso, we typically take anywhere from maybe 50 steps to a couple hundred steps. We’ve had one patient taking over 1,000 steps a session. That really doesn’t compare with other gait therapies that we use.
One of the best things about the Ekso is that it only gives as much help as the patient needs. It’s training them; it’s working on their core stability; it’s working on their endurance, their coordination. There are so many more benefits to it than just helping someone walk that can’t walk.
Anthony Jacobs, M.D., Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation: Stroke patients especially, their recovery is different as to how fast you are able to mobilize them. So having the Eksoskeleton available in the rehabilitation process in the hospital, their recovery in functional mobility is at a fast past compared to somebody who goes through the traditional exercise program.
Lucretia Shields: I would come down every day to visit him, and every day you can see that every day he is able to do a little bit more. He still has a long ways to go, but since he has been using the suit, he has graduated from the wheelchair. They taught him how to use the cane. I don’t have to help him get out of bed. I don’t have to help him get in the shower. He is able to do all that for himself. He is able to go up and down stairs, you know walk around the grocery store – things that he was not able to do just a couple weeks ago, even. So you can imagine when I would come into rehab and see him, you really start to feel like there is hope that you can get back what you have lost.
